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Saturday, June 3, 2017

Meet My Friend and Fellow Ricardian, Joan Szechtman, Author of Time Travels and More to Come...

Every Ricardian (those of us interested—and usually
fascinated—with Richard III) has a story about how they ‘discovered’ Richard. I “found”
him in a book on the wrong shelf of the Cambridge Library, up in the stacks. I
joined the Richard III Society, and the rest is “history”! This was 1992.
Several years later, several dedicated Ricardians formed a New England Chapter
of the Society, where I met Joan. We became fast friends, as kindred souls; not
only did we write novels featuring Richard, but we wrote time travels in which
Richard comes to modern times—even before we met.

Meet Joan, read about her time travel trilogy, and
what’s on the drawing board.

About
Joan

Tell
us a little about yourself.

After retiring from a career in Computer Science and Data
Communications, I accidentally reinvented myself as a writer because I read a
book—THE SUNNE IN SPLENDOUR by Sharon Kay Penman. I found Richard III’s story
so compelling that I did a deep dive
into his history. I just published my third and final book, STRANGE TIMES,
about Richard III in the 21st century.

While learning about the
real Richard III, I found the Richard III Society and joined the American Branch.
About six years after joining the society, I became the editor of the
semi-annual magazine, RICARDIAN REGISTER, and the semi-annual newsletter,
RICARDIAN CHRONICLE.

I like to read a variety of
genres and styles. In no particular order, an incomplete list of my reading
ranges from science fiction, science, humor, historical fiction, and biography.

Your trilogy is about Richard III in the 21st Century. Why
did you bring him forward in time?

Once I discovered the real man was not Shakespeare’s arch-villain I
loved to hate, I began to wonder about him as a person and imagined sitting
across from him at dinner. What would he tell me about his nephews—the infamous
princes in the Tower, his family, and his friends and enemies.

One of the facts deeply
affecting me about Richard III was his age—thirty-two—when he was killed in his
final battle. I felt his story wasn’t finished and I wanted to examine his
character in a modern light, without forcing our modern sensibilities onto his
fifteenth-century actions. To do this, I had to let him speak for himself.

What were your conclusions
about his nephews?

Despite the rumors the
princes had met an evil end and Tudor’s willingness to parlay these rumors to
his advantage, extant documentation and contemporary reports show only that the
boys disappeared. Setting aside the lack of documentation, I also took into
consideration the behaviors of both Richard III and Henry VII. Then, it was
standard operating procedure to display bodies to “prove” that their reigns
were without credible challenge. Despite the way Henry had Richard’s body
mistreated immediately after the battle, he nevertheless had it put on display
to show that he was now the undisputed king. I have to think that if Henry had
killed the princes or knew where their bodies were, he would have displayed
them and blamed Richard for their deaths. If Richard had had them killed, he
could have easily first blamed Welles for their deaths during the botched
attempt to “free” them from the tower, and then later, Buckingham, when Richard
had him executed for treason.

Richard had far less reason
to want the princes dead than did Henry. Through “Titulus Regius” parliament
declared Richard the rightful king and bastardized all of Edward IV’s children.
As bastards, the princes could not inherit any title. Henry VII had his
parliament revoke “Titulus Regius” which enabled his marriage to Edward IV’s
oldest daughter, Elizabeth Woodville. If the princes were alive, they now had
more claim to the crown now that their impediment had been removed. In fact,
based on how he handled the man he called Perkin Warbeck, I think he was more
than a little afraid that Warbeck was really Richard of York, the younger of
Edward IV’s two sons. Interestingly, Warbeck claimed to have been in Edward
Brampton’s household in Portugal. Now Brampton was a Portuguese Jew who
converted soon after Edward IV first became king and served both Edward and
Richard. Among the many awards that Richard gave Brampton, he knighted him in
1484—the first monarch to knight a converted Jew. As much as Richard may have
liked the guy, I think there had to have been an extraordinary reason for him
to grant Brampton knighthood. I think a strong reason was that Richard had
entrusted Richard of York’s care to Brampton.

What device did you use to effect time travel and what limitations
did you employ?

Having something of a
scientific background, I decided to “invent” a time travel machine and to
follow the physical laws as closely as possible. Therefore, one could not just
go back into the past or come forward into the future without an equal exchange
of mass/energy (the law of conservation of mass/energy). Additionally, without
the equal exchange, the time displaced mass would soon disintegrate. So, for my
Ricardian team to bring Richard III forward at the moment he would have been
killed in battle, they had to exchange an object of equal mass with him fully
armored. It also meant that a person or object could not travel through time
and remain without being damaged to the point of death.

A second limitation to time
travel is the position of a particular object—such as the planet—in the
universe. Because the universe is expanding at increasing speed, every object
is hurtling through space. The calculations to go to a specific point on the
earth either back or forward in time would be quite complicated and have to
account for trillions of miles displacement.

Since STRANGE
TIMES is the third book of the trilogy, please tell us a little about the first two.

THIS TIME starts moments
before Richard III loses to Henry Tudor on the field of Redemore near
Leicester, England on August 22, 1485. In THIS TIME, a team of Ricardians
substitutes an armor-clad corpse for the king and brings Richard into Portland,
Oregon. He awakens August 21, 2004 to an alien world where even the English he
speaks is different.

The story follows two
parallel paths: the present where Richard must learn how to adjust to not only
the technological advancements but also the more difficult cultural
differences; and looking back at the past to solve some of the mysteries that
have haunted and maligned his image for over 500 years.

The second book, LOYALTY
BINDS ME, continues Richard III's story. Richard has married a divorcee, adopted
her two daughters, and with the help of his new wife, has been able to rescue
his son Edward, who had predeceased him in the 15th-century. Richard has lived
in the twenty-first century for two years, and his son has been with him for
the past year. At the start of the novel, they have just arrived in London,
when Richard is brought in by the Metropolitan Police for questioning about the
alleged murder of Richard III's nephews in 1483. Richard must now find a way to
clear his name and protect his family while concealing his true identity.

STRANGE TIMES starts
immediately after Richard and family return to Portland, Oregon.

What are your thoughts on historical accuracy?

I think it is important to
respect the lives and histories of those who have gone before us. Therefore, I
try to stay as close to the known history as possible, given that not all
references are themselves accurate and in some instances are in conflict with
other respected sources. In addition, there are often gaps of knowledge, where
important details are unknown. So, as a novelist, I try to learn and understand
as much as I’m able about certain events and actors and fill in those gaps
based on my understanding of the material I have absorbed.

Part of my research goes to
formulating what may have motivated a character to behave the way he or she had
in real life to find a way of letting me into that character’s head.

How has the discovery of Richard’s Remains affected this trilogy?

While I was able to follow
Richard’s 15th century history as reported, only adding my own
speculation where there was no extant or conflicting documentation, the same
could not be said for his 21st century history. The remains were
found at a unique time, where the remains could be confirmed as his through DNA
and isotopic tests, which without employing a massive deus ex machina, could
not be reconciled with what would have been found in the remains of the body
that was substituted for Richard.

Many time-travel novels ignore language differences, but you didn’t.
Yet, Richard was able to adjust rapidly to modern English.

Richard was probably fluent
in three or four languages, and although today’s English would have at first
sounded foreign to him, I felt that there were enough similarities—based on my
reading of THE PASTON LETTERS, for example—between Early Modern English and
today’s English that he would have been able to understand a lot of what he
heard fairly quickly. I also provided a linguist that was able to help him over
the inevitable speed bumps.

Do you have other projects in mind?

Yes. I have a paranormal
languishing on my back burner about Catherine Howard’s spirit invading a young
woman who is studying American History at Virginia Commonwealth University in
Richmond, VA. She’s an intern at Agecroft Hall, a late 15th century
manor. Thomas C. Williams Jr., a wealthy Richmond entrepreneur, transported
timber by stone to his twenty-three acre estate overlooking the James River.
The modified reconstruction was completed in 1928 and is now in the U. S.
National Register of Historic Places.

Two other projects that are
in more nascent states of development are a science fiction story and an
anecdotal family history with lots of photos.